It is true that there are many discussions on this point but I disagree that the consensus is not to freeze.

It really depends on how it is done. A giant bag, open in the freezer, nope, not going to work as the link you provided points out, it messes with the moisture in the bean, let alone they absorb flavors.

Sealed when fresh, excess air removed and deep frozen then thawed before opening the bag, does not harm them, not any that I can taste nor that a lot of "coffee gurus" can either.

The only way to know if it makes a difference to you is to try it yourself. My finding is that when frozen fresh I see the beans age about two days worth for every week in the freezer. I have been freezing beans for years. I freeze when the beans get to me and at the end of a month in the freezer, I still get great, gloppy extractions from the beans but then YMMV.

I think it was 10 or 15 years ago I quit freezing beans. I vacuum packed them with one of those vacuum packers and froze them.Then I put them in the plastic vacuum containersin a dark cupboard.That worked as good as the freezer really. The results were better than old stale beans I must saybut not like fresh beans. I found it a lot easier to keep the quality up by ordering based on consumption rate and home roasting. Nothing beats fresh beans .The three enemies of roasted coffee are light, oxygen and heat. By retarding oxidation though freezing you run the risk of picking up stale odors from things put in the freezerand you also have to let them unthaw where they through condensation gather moisture. I now only order beans with roast dates or roast my own. I dont know how many lbs of green beans I got stored.A lb of Vivace,3 or 4 lbs of Sweet Marias espresso,2 lbs Jamaican Blue mountain,3 lbs of a great Chiapas,3 lbs of an excellent Galapagos from San Cristobal, Costa Rican,all green..and a bunch more.So for mefreezing coffee was a panacea that was hindering the journey. I say fresh is best...yep even better than frozen. I try to keep it there. Roast and let em off gas. Call Klatch or Intelligentsia or Paradise or any number of roasters who put a roast date on the bag and try to live in the fresh zone. Anyways if freezing is what works for you guys I think you should keep at it. I dont think its about taste preferencesbecause no one ever seems to argue about fresh roasted coffee. Very interesting though I must say. I am glad its working for you. I might run a test just for the heck of it. I got a new vacuum sealer awhile back. Are you saying that beans in a freezer for two months are equal to ones coming right off the roast???

Ron I have an email in to Mary to ask around for an answer. My results in the cup do not taste of a 4f change but I will reserve my opinion of that until I can run 2lbs of same coffee through over a 3 day test. An Eric's thermometer sure would clear this up for me quickly.

I think my machine is getting self conscious, it is back in 15amp with both boilers on and it hasn't gone outside of a 2f swing for the last hour even with a flush to challange it. Artificial intelligence?

Edit: not a matter of challenging the brew boiler, but pull some steam and the 3-4f fluctuation is back.

I appreciate your honesty and now am wondering about temperature fluctuations . I mean seriously, if an Alexia Duetto 3 does that what are most of the other ones doing? I will be watching for your findings. I mean I know its an excellent machine and Chris reputation is impeccable. Its a beauty,truly is.

The best is keeping thing is keeping the ice cream sub zero in the deep freeze and then making the kids go dip it :0)

Iluvdabean Said:

The three enemies of roasted coffee are light, oxygen and heat. By retarding oxidation though freezing you run the risk of picking up stale odors from things put in the freezer and you also have to let them unthaw where they through condensation gather moisture.

Light - it is pitch ass black in the deep freeze with the lid closed though i don't recommend seeing for yourself just ask my brother's ex-wife, kidding :)

Oxygen - there is no more or less of it around beans packaged the someway regardless were they are stored. If they pick up smells then the container sucks or it was a half ass job when they were prepared for the freezer. If the beans are not sealed well enough to keep smells out then they are screwed before you get started.

Heat - There better not be any in the deep freeze. The fridge on the freezer just won't cut it for anything but ice and frozen veggies and things you going to eat with in a week.

Condensation - if you draw a reasonable vacuum on the container and thaw with said container closed this is a none issue. It has no more impact on the beans than relative humidity in the house. Drawing a killer vacuum on the beans may well damage the beans.

Done well freezing works for many folks. The more you do to the bean the more chance of screwing it up. Get even a little sloppy with the freezing process and no question your in worse shape than when you started. I am huge believer in thawing in small batches never thawing more than what i will consume in a day or two at the most. If it goes longer it gets ground up and tossed in the garden.

When it comes to freezers empty space is bad bad bad. As supplies dwindle i put 5gallon pails of water in to keep the level more or less constant. It helps with energy bills a bit and keeps temps steady even in power outages. My neighbor raises all my beef, pork and we raise and butcher all our own poultry.

Next to my grinder and Duetto this is my favorite machine. Warning not for the squeamish Here

Sorry for the drift Rob but knowing you sudo butcher I just could not help myself. :)

Yes i have a reason for leaving SCG off my list, yes it is my opinion, yes it is subjective as opinions are by definition, no don't start a flame war because you disagree.

Thats why I always say try it and see for yourself, I am not saying it is for everyone, far from it but it is not the universal quality killer it is sometimes made out to be.When in proper packaging, they will not pick up off flavor and if thawed in the sealed bag they were froze in, they do NOT pick up any moisture nor do they loose any moisture to the freezer.

Light, heat and moisture are all reduced with proper procedures to freezing. YMMV!

In real life, my name isWayne P.Anything I post is personal opinion and is only worth as much as anyone else's personal opinion. YMMV!

Very interesting though I must say. I am glad its working for you. I might run a test just for the heck of it. I got a new vacuum sealer awhile back. Are you saying that beans in a freezer for two months are equal to ones coming right off the roast???

No and if you read what I posted, (and what you quoted that I posted) I said that in my experence, they age about a day and a half to two days for every week in the freezer. So if frozen at 4 days post roast (typical of mail order) two months (I never go more than one but you stated two) would be 8 weeks and at two days per week, that would be 16 days of aging plus the 4 you started with so to my taste anyway, the result would be similar to beans at three weeks of age. YMMV

In real life, my name isWayne P.Anything I post is personal opinion and is only worth as much as anyone else's personal opinion. YMMV!

I appreciate your honesty and now am wondering about temperature fluctuations . I mean seriously, if an Alexia Duetto 3 does that what are most of the other ones doing? I will be watching for your findings. I mean I know its an excellent machine and Chris reputation is impeccable. Its a beauty,truly is.

The dead band is much tighter since returning to 15a and both boilers on. It will still over shoot the set boiler temp by 2f after pulling a shot and steaming but after a cycle or two settles in to a 2f swing. Did it learn from its errors? My home thermostats do, my PID pit controller does. My old house was hot water radiators and not only did they take up to an hour before they where kicking heat off they would overshoot the set temp by 4f when first warming the house, I always had to think for the system to keep the home comfortable. Installing a programmable system that learned what to do was such a wow moment for me. It makes sense to me that my Duetto PID needed some challenges to learn and make some changes to its algorithms. I am not going to mess with any PID values myself but the wealth of knowledge of the members here there is a good chance someone will say " if you set it up like this the machine will perform this way."

I am the type of person who buys a new car and takes it straight to my engine guru. Engines and the computers that tell them what to do are set up for a plethora of different driving styles and help to keep warenty costs down even for the most abusive owners. Depending on what I want out of a car we make changes to suit the need, most dealerships will void your drivetrain warenty, even your entire warenty if you try to slip this past them. There are dealerships that understand that you are making things better, some even work with proven speed shops to huge changes and they warenty all the work. I just can't help to look at something and wonder how to improve it.

I have some interesting personal reasons to freeze. My roaster is a 1kg commercial machine, roasting is my real passion, drinking the stuff is more a necessity, and I roast a lot of beans, I have 117lbs of green on hand and I like my stock to rotate every 6-8 months. Convenience is a huge factor, if somebody was coming by to pick up some beans but can't make it I freeze. I have certain beans/blends for espresso that I like the best in a 1-3 day window so I freeze 8oz at a time (a days worth of espresso at my home) a day before prime age. I challenge this often by roasting, jaring two and leaving one to drink, then pull a previous roast from the freezer of the same bean and then pull from the freezer same roast as the non frozen, all are at their prime and all taste the same. this also let's me get a bench mark on my profiles from roasts from a few days ago to a few months ago, not all tweaks to profiles end up being improvements, myvcupping notes can be very dependent on mood, the moon, the stars and just don't do what freezing can do for me. Light, moisture, oxygen are all best to avoid, this is easy enough but those beans will still change day to day because they are degassing co2. To stop or slow to a crawl the release of co2 freezing or pressurizing ( tried and true but it seems beans age very rapidly after popping the top), freezing below -20f stops degassing and the warmer the temp is the quicker the bean will degass, so a bean stored at 100f will degass fast and a bean at 0f will degass very slow.

What a great morning with the Duetto! I am having to change some of my routines to fit the machine, one of these is steaming, I always steamed to the side on Oscar, my style of holding the various steaming pitchers wouldn't work on the side of the Duetto, grip had to change and still was not great results. So the directions of the Duetto say to steam to the front, I did try this the first day but returned to my ways, this morning I did the way the manual said and I was able to get the best micro foam I ever had on my wife's non fat latte, big improvement for 2% and whole as well.

Is the first stop spot of the brew lever where pre infusion would start if plumbed in?

My panic that the 4f dead and swing was less accurate then what I can do on a HX machine has been relieved. I forgot to ask Jason, a tech at Chris', if I could post some of his email responses so I will just relay them in my words. Where the Duetto is measuring water is at the top of the boiler near where the water supply comes in, this make the reading swing larger after brewing until the water mixed and the reading stabilizes. The temperature stability of the group should be able to handle theses swings within 2f.

We then chatted about that my temp swings are no longer larger then +/-1f when idle and even after brewing the dead band is only reading +2f on the temp over shoot. Yes my PID did learned a bit and is keeping a tighter dead band now, i was warned that lots of changes to set point temp would challenge the sorta learning the pid does. I believe switching to 20amp will improve this a bit more after steaming and brewing since heater duties won't have to alternate between heaters.

Then we got onto chatting about smoking foods and using a PID to control the pit, I guess when your job is coffee machines talking about something else is a break even if it is still PID related, lol. He is threatening a firm ware glitch so I have to bring my machine along with some Q.

Edit: sure enough, a change from set point of 200f to 199f brought the bigger temp swings, 199f was to cool for the beans I am using so now to try 201 and see if that is a drastic change in taste from 200f.

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